Electronic calendars are increasingly used to organize our lives. Such calendars are accessed from both desktop computers and portable computing devices (e.g., laptop computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and wearable computers).
One problem that limits more widespread use of electronic calendars is the process of filling out electronic calendar entries. Current calendar entry techniques are cumbersome and inefficient. Users typically must type or cut-and-paste data into multiple calendar fields (e.g., date, start time, end time, location, activity, and people involved). Some research groups have tried to develop systems (e.g., the Stanford Event eXtraction sYstem) that automatically create calendar entries from free-form e-mail messages, with limited success.
Thus, it would be highly desirable to find new, more efficient ways to create electronic calendar entries from email messages.